Field of the Invention
The invention relates to editing and creating chemical structures on a touch-screen device.
Description of the Related Art
There are many occasions in which editing a molecular structure on a computer is necessary in the process of designing and studying chemical compounds useful in the following fields: agricultural, analytical, biochemical, biotechnology, food and flavor, pharmaceutical, legal, medicinal, oil and petroleum, polymer, pulp and paper, and textile or in chemistry education. Traditionally, creating and editing structures is done primarily using the mouse to indicate locations of new atoms and bonds, and the keyboard to indicate element types associated with the atoms. Complex chemical structure drawings are built up by selecting predefined templates from vast sheets of templates, and templates are linked together via atoms and bonds. An example of a traditional editing application is shown by Facci et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 5,461,580.
With modern devices having touch screens, and with multi-touch capability, editing molecular structures can be made easier by utilizing these new technologies. There are a number of touch-screen gestures that have standard interpretations in other software applications. Generally, these gestures have descriptive names, and where appropriate, those names will be used here. It should be understood that any reference to such names is not limiting of the types of gestures which may be used in the various embodiments.